5 More Interviews, 1 Less Feature, and a Reality Check

👟 Topic: 5 More Interviews, 1 Less Feature, and a Reality Check

👾 Get my AI Coding file: I’m documenting everything I learn about AI coding so you don’t have too. Get my personal notes below

ChatGPT is a superpower if you know how to use it correctly.

Discover how HubSpot's guide to AI can elevate both your productivity and creativity to get more things done.

Learn to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, and foster innovation with the power of AI.

Download the free guide

Five more user interviews later, I realized I've been thinking about one half of Pingem wrong.

Let me explain.

After sitting down with five more users this past week, something clicked. Pingem really has two distinct parts:

Part 1: Email generation. This is the engine, how well does the AI draft your cold email? I'm feeling good about this side.

Users are satisfied with the output. The emails read human enough, the subject lines are creative, and with the profile generation feature, the personalization and tailoring is something I’d launch tomorrow.

Part 2: Discovery. This is the front door, how do users find the right person to email in the first place? And this is where I needed to rethink things.

Here's the thing about user research: it doesn't just tell you what to build. It tells you what to stop building.

Through these interviews, two patterns kept showing up:

→ Most users don't network for the sake of networking. They only reach out when they know someone is actively hiring.

→ And how do they know someone is hiring? Almost always the same way: they already have the job posting pulled up with the description in front of them.

We're removing option one entirely.

Here's why: maintaining a backend list of companies is a pain, and more importantly, users don't need it.

Most already know which companies they want to apply to. They're not in an "I don't know where to apply" state — and even if they were, they already have LinkedIn for that. I'm not trying to compete with LinkedIn.

The focus for the foreseeable future is to perfect “Search by Job Post” feature.

Here's the vision: you paste a LinkedIn job post URL, and Pingem surfaces the decision makers behind the role.

I still have some work to do on this, but the ideal state is clear: complement LinkedIn, don't compete with it. Find the humans behind the opportunity.

Once this feature is solid, I'll run a third wave of user interviews. And if that wave goes well? I'm hoping it'll be time for a soft launch via a LinkedIn post. More to come on that.

That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this post, share it with a friend!

If they subscribe, I’ll send you my personal AI coding doc!

To refer, use your unique link.

See you next Tuesday 🤝

-Michael Ly

{{rp_personalized_text}}

Or copy and paste your unique link to them: {{rp_refer_url}}